Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Turner
Request for Comments: 6176 IECA
Updates: 2246, 4346, 5246 T. Polk
Category: Standards Track NIST
ISSN: 2070-1721 March 2011
Prohibiting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Version 2.0
Abstract
This document requires that when Transport Layer Security (TLS)
clients and servers establish connections, they never negotiate the
use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 2.0. This document updates
the backward compatibility sections found in the Transport Layer
Security (TLS).
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6176.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Turner & Polk Standards Track [Page 1]RFC 6176 Prohibiting SSL 2.0 March 20111. Introduction
Many protocols specified in the IETF rely on Transport Layer Security
(TLS) [TLS1.0][TLS1.1][TLS1.2] for security services. This is a good
thing, but some TLS clients and servers also support negotiating the
use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version 2.0 [SSL2]; however, this
version does not provide a sufficiently high level of security. SSL
version 2.0 has known deficiencies. This document describes those
deficiencies, and it requires that TLS clients and servers never
negotiate the use of SSL version 2.0.
RFC 4346 [TLS1.1], and later RFC 5246 [TLS1.2], explicitly warned
implementers that the "ability to send version 2.0 CLIENT-HELLO
messages will be phased out with all due haste". This document
accomplishes this by updating the backward compatibility sections
found in TLS [TLS1.0][TLS1.1][TLS1.2].
1.1. Requirements Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
[RFC2119].
2. SSL 2.0 Deficiencies
SSL version 2.0 [SSL2] deficiencies include the following:
o Message authentication uses MD5 [MD5]. Most security-aware users
have already moved away from any use of MD5 [RFC6151].
o Handshake messages are not protected. This permits a man-in-the-
middle to trick the client into picking a weaker cipher suite than
it would normally choose.
o Message integrity and message encryption use the same key, which
is a problem if the client and server negotiate a weak encryption
algorithm.
o Sessions can be easily terminated. A man-in-the-middle can easily
insert a TCP FIN to close the session, and the peer is unable to
determine whether or not it was a legitimate end of the session.
Turner & Polk Standards Track [Page 2]RFC 6176 Prohibiting SSL 2.0 March 20113. Changes to TLS
Because of the deficiencies noted in the previous section:
o TLS clients MUST NOT send the SSL version 2.0 compatible CLIENT-
HELLO message format. Clients MUST NOT send any ClientHello
message that specifies a protocol version less than
{ 0x03, 0x00 }. As previously stated by the definitions of all
previous versions of TLS, the client SHOULD specify the highest